100 Days: Day 1

02/12/2009

I’ve got involved in Josie Long’s A Hundred Days project and have pledged to do an illustration and a story based upon said illustration, or vice versa, each day for the next one hundred days, starting today. Here’s today’s.

Angel.

The prolonged and repetitive squeak of polythene under dressing gowned buttock underlined Herbert’s anxiety as he failed to find comfort in his trusty cosy chair. Click, click, insisted the clock, but the passage of time did not seem to follow. Liar, Herbert thought. He watched the front door, too preoccupied to mute the television as that Iceland advert came on.

‘Hardly punctual’ he rasped through a puff of smoke and lay back attempting to bluff himself into a false sense of relaxation.

The doorbell.

‘About bloody time’ Herbert declared as he wrenched himself to his feet with all the grace and agility of a newborn giraffe. Herbert is old. He sauntered toward the door, indulging in the draught that caused his dressing gown to billow around his liver spotted ankles, he felt like Charlton Heston.

As casually as his thinly veiled excitement would allow, Herbert opened the door and propped himself upon it’s narrowest edge. He was affronted by what greeted him.

Hovering like a buzzard two foot from Herbert’s furrowed brow was Angus, his red sequinned thong glistening in the broad daylight. Without exchanging pleasantries the two stared at one another contemplating what the next hour had in store.